In entering the presidential race for a record fourth time, General Muhammed Buhari could not have expected he would become a phenomenon in our national politics. He has. This fact has crept up slowly on the nation. It is not easy to explain away his transformation, partly because it is complicated and partly because it would amount to trying to unravel the mysteries of human mood swings and how the wind of the dynamics of national politics blows. If there are political psychoanalysts, they have a big task here.
Buhari is a political surprise. Nothing in his character or his professional military training hints at his becoming a man of the people, riding on the crest waves of populism where it matters most – among the poor, the dispossessed, the cheated and the despairing.
Buhari is an ascetic and a rigid military man. Populism is not his cup of tea. At least, until now that he finds himself the crowned head of a popular politician. He did not enter the race waving the banner of populism. He did so, waving his flag as a serious-minded politician. He has offered nothing but his credentials as an incorruptible and competent leader with the sole objective of fixing his badly broken country.
Normally, his sales pitch would be a no-no because we have been conditioned to expect and even demand largesse from politicians during electioneering campaigns, the only time they reach out to the people. It is no secret that there is lack of mutual trust between the people and the politicians. It is quid pro quo: Give us money, get our votes. And because Buhari, being of a spare flesh, cannot shake body, his campaign promises would be treated as airy nothings – full of sound but not the welcome sound the Naira makes in the pocket.
Buhari has stood that conventional wisdom on its head – I hope for good and the good of our country. The poor flock to him in a way we have not seen since perhaps the First Republic when Chief Obafemi Awolowo and the champion of the talakwa, Malam Aminu Kano, championed their cause. The poor know he has no money and did not come into the race with a war chest bulging with dollars, pounds and Naira. So, instead of asking him for money, they chip in the little they have for his campaigns. As witness the 80-year old woman in Niger State who gave him her life’s saving of one million Naira. As witness schoolboys and hundreds of the struggling poor who chipped in their proverbial widow’s mite.
A politician funded by the people? What is even more interesting is that hundreds of the young men and women who work in the Buhari Campaign at national and state levels, are volunteers. They work for free because they believe, I suspect, that the lack of money should not debar him from his noble national pursuit. It does have the grating sound of aberration.
Buhari does not rent crowds at his campaign rallies. The people flock there at their own expense. It must be a big surprise that the common people see in him the genuine and honest leader they crave for. I keep hearing something like these: I trust him because he is honest. He had the chance to feather his own nest but he did not. He is the only politician who is genuinely offended by the brazen theft of our common wealth. I believe he is the only one who has what it takes to stop the rot and rescue our nation. We are drowning.
However you look at it, Buhari is leading an authentic political movement of the common people for the common people. His transformation is telling evidence that victimhood could be the road to heroism. Luck, therefore, played a major part in this. Part of his luck was that the PDP moguls made the fundamental mistake of making him the issue in its presidential campaigns. It went after Buhari in every sleazy way: questioning his qualification or even literacy; fabricating his health records and dragging the innocent members of his family into the fray. It is sordid desperate.
While the PDP foul mouths went after him this way, the man concentrated on selling himself to the various economic and demographic groups in the country. His town hall meeting with businessmen was an important step for creating an economic programme that would take this country from this country from being a true economic giant of Africa. Buhari thus concentrates on the real issues that affect the country and its teeming ordinary people. I find him usually at least one step ahead of the PDP. In response, its attack dogs lose their heads and let loose a fusillade of invectives that does nothing for their image as desperadoes. Their attacks on Buhari became a turn off for many – and some came down from sitting on the fence and cast their lot with him.
My take is that Buhari is a surprise beneficiary of the politics of hate and smear campaigns. His political opponents have waged a relentless war in attempts to assail his integrity with loads of lies and fabrications. You would expect a short-tempered military man to respond in kind. Not Buhari. He puts himself above the political fray and focuses on the task and the challenges before him. His statesmanlike response to insults has been calm, measured and cool headed. This is part of the building block of his new persona. It seems to me that the more his political opponents attack him, the more the people are moved to protect him.
Part of the game plan of the PDP and the presidency in postponing the general election for six weeks was that Buhari would come out, the guns of anger blazing, and his party men and women would take to the streets in protests that would likely turn ugly and give Jonathan and his men the excuse to put into effect the plan to either postpone the election indefinitely or impose on the country an ugly contraption called interim government.
They were shocked that the general understood the game. He saw the trap. Armed with his considerable moral authority, Buhari kept his party leaders and members in line. They did not raise their voices of protests above those of other people who saw in the subterfuge a well-laid out plan to stop Buhari. His response and that of his party deflated the PDP and shattered its game plan. And again Buhari emerged from it a victor, not a victim.
To recast Governor Sule Lamido’s dictum: The fear of Buhari is the reason for some hope in our democracy.
It could still be a bubble. It would be naïve not to make due allowances for that. The March 28 presidential election may settle it. Whatever might be Buhari’s final political fate in that election, no one would take away from him some fundamental lessons of his quest for power. Our national politics, post Buhari, would not be the same again. Firstly, he has brought the common people into reckoning in our national politics, showing, as no other presidential candidate has done so far, that power truly belongs to the people. His common touch is genuine and his drive for an inclusive nation is sincere.
Secondly, he has amply demonstrated that politics is not a do-or-die affair and the easy resort to smear campaigns and personal insults is cheap and blasé. Thirdly, he has shown that the koboless has a chance in the contest for political power now dominated by the rich. Fourthly, his drive rekindles the faith of the many in the capacity of this nation to rescue itself and heal itself of its self-inflicted wounds.
Fifthly and perhaps, most importantly, the merger of the four parties into one formidable party, APC, owes as much to Buhari’s belief in the place of political parties as authentic platforms for democracy and national progress, as it does to the political sagacity of that truly wily politician, Senator Ahmed Bola Tinubu, former governor of Lagos State. If APC becomes a truly authentic alternative political cboice, then we can look back to these times and acknowledge Buhari as a phenomenon, who, through the weight of his moral authority, helped to erect the pillars for the future of our nation and its democracy.
Agbese, former Editor-in-Chief, Newswatch magazine, is an executive director of MayFive Media Limited
